Mumbai Police Tweets Warning About Crack In Bridge, Traffic Diverted

A cracked road overbridge at Mumbai’s Grant Road Station has been promptly closed by the city police in the wake of yesterday’s bridge collapse at Andheri, in which five people were injured. The road overbridge is located in a busy area of Mumbai. Photographs from the spot show a deep, long crack running along the divider.

Announcing the bridge closure in a tweet, the Mumbai police said traffic has been diverted from the area.

The bridge at Grant road station has cracked, hence the traffic has been diverted to Nana chowk towards Kennedy bridge #TrafficUpdate

A portion of a road overbridge at Andheri — connecting two busy train stops — collapsed after heavy rains yesterday. The overbridge, used by thousands of commuters each day, had been checked for safety barely seven months ago and was cited as an example of how the country’s financial capital is let down by civic unpreparedness during the monsoons.

The 40-year-old foot overbridge had crashed down around 7.30 am yesterday, ripping off overhead wires and blocking train services on one of three main railway lines into the city. Traffic at the bridge was stopped and trains, which are Mumbai’s lifeline, were hit.

After the incident, the Railways said it would conduct a safety audit of around 450 road overbridges, foot overbridges and bridges over the pipelines in Mumbai. The audit will be done by a director of an Indian Institute of Technology, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal had said.

The mishap at Andheri took place nine months after the Elphinstone Bridge collapse, which triggered a stampede that killed 23 people.